Manatee County commission failing to do their job and fund road maintenance

Historically, when taxes are raised, they never go down. The Herald's position that raising taxes is necessary is not justified by their lack of investigation into aspects of how our taxpayer dollars will be spent.

First, taxes probably started from the need to keep the wagon-wheeled roads open. We, here in modern Manatee County and the City of Bradenton, cannot afford to have our roads paved?

Yet somehow we can afford to support developers who openly break the law, fund development districts for private business, and now build bicycle paths? This smacks of the kind of elitism that ignores what isn't sexy, like roads, and for "pet projects."

Do any of the commissioners remember Nero, who fiddled as Rome burned???

By not keeping the roads up, you, the county commissioners, are degrading the property values of the county you were elected to protect and now seek to RAISE taxes. Typical of what people think of government nowadays, a bad cliché.

The roads on the west side of town are breaking up badly; and, as I have been told by two different county commissioners, "we have no money" and "that's in the city, we don't pave there." Could that be because we are not as politically affluent, aka we can't afford to donate money to the right campaign fund?

To that I say rearrange your priorities. Roads are the foundation for taxes. You are not doing your jobs.

Mark Comerford

Bradenton

This story was originally published April 27, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Manatee County commission failing to do their job and fund road maintenance ."